My mum has always said that she would do anything for her kids in order to help use grow and develop into the people we are / will become, and I wanted to explore this in a couple of sculptural pieces following concepts and ideas in my previous post, Here. I see this desire to protect and nurture in a lot of parents / guardians, even in a lot of friendships and couples, but I know this is something that not all people will feel the need to give or receive.
Within this first structure each component represents people in a family dynamic, for example mother and children, but of course this can be adapted to many other relationship dynamics whereby one member protects those they care for.
In this scale, the outer component can be adapted to become some sort of tea light holder, the heat of the flame providing a more tactile experience and immersive element to the piece as you feel the warmth inside the mother's embrace. What I didn't see in the first stages of completion with this piece was that the rising heat from the flame would also burn the back of the mother figure bent over it, further illustrating how challenging (both mentally and physically) raising children can be.
This third structure was an impulsive decision that was made without any initial concepts or specifications in mind; looking through images of Henry Moore's work I wanted to create something with a similar curvaceous nature to it.
The end result left me thinking about scale, whether I would keep it small and perhaps adapt it to be a candle holder as the structure resembles some sort of parental/ nurturing figure with arms that would cautiously cradle the flame, or whether I would dramatically upscale the structure and adapt it to become some sort of outdoor interactive piece, or model of such because of the restrictions I had to work around.
With the intention of making a tea light holder, as opposed to it being an after thought as was the case with the other pieces, I experimented further with the idea of arms cradling the flame whilst giving it room to grow. At first the 'arms' were twisted around the surrounding space above the flame but the material I was using to create these pieces (air drying, paper based clay - brand name unspecified) could not support the structure throughout the drying process. Having the arms as they are now, I think, gives a more intimate feel that works better with the concepts in mind.
Since my last post I am now one unit into a fine art degree and no closer to finding my practice as an artist!
I'm having a lot of fun trying new things though, who knows where my practice will end up.